Hubble Reveals Brilliant Birthplace of New Stars

H II Regions Contain Star Clouds

ABOVE VIDEO: Astronomers use Hubble images of the giant star cluster Omega Centauri to predict where the stars will be in a decade or more. The cluster’s 10 million stars, among the first stars to form in the universe, are in constant motion. Studying their movements helps scientists to understand the formation of the universe.

BREVARD COUNTY • CAPE CANVERAL, FLORIDA – The Hubble Space Telescope has done it again, this time capturing stunning images of the birthplace of stars in a distant galaxy.

The brilliant birth of numerous stars in the Galaxy NGC 4700 is shown in an image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (Image courtesy NASA/ESA)

Earlier this summer Hubble, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency, gave astronomers a series of brilliant images of Galaxy NGC 4700, an edge on galaxy about 50 million light years from Earth.

H II Regions

The images show the galaxy contains numerous bright pinkish clouds known as H II regions and were difficult to obtain without using the Hubble Space Telescope because Galaxy NGC 4700 is moving away from Earth at the rate of about 1400 km per second because of the expansion of the Universe.